WASHINGTON, D.C. – Worth Rises, an organization dedicated to dismantling the prison industry, has sharply criticized the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to revise regulations on communication services for incarcerated people in 2025, calling the changes “predatory and misguided.”
The FCC has proposed increasing the phone call rate cap to $0.11 per minute, nearly double the 2024 cap of $0.06 per minute. According to Worth Rises, incarcerated people and their families will lose an estimated $215 million in annual relief as a result.
The new proposal affects those held in both prisons and jails. Worth Rises estimates that the share of incarcerated people in prisons benefiting from the rate cap would fall from 78 percent to 42 percent, resulting in a loss of relief for about 446,000 people.
Worth Rises Executive Director Bianca Tylek released a statement condemning the FCC’s proposal. “Under the new rules, as currently drafted, incarcerated people and their families will receive significantly less relief than originally anticipated and is necessary,” she said. “Rolling back such important and well-reasoned regulations to address a singular uncompromising jail or pretextual concerns undermines more than a decade of the agency’s work in setting just and reasonable rates, as mandated by Congress by the Martha Wright Reed Act. The 2024 rules were projected to generate nearly two billion additional call minutes every year, strengthening family bonds and public safety alike.”
Tylek also accused correctional telecom providers of being motivated purely by profit, seeking to reclaim revenue “from those incarcerated with no real concern for the people nor their families.”
She urged the FCC to heed feedback from those directly affected by the proposed changes. Worth Rises reported that more than 15,000 public comments have opposed revising the 2024 rules. Over the next week, the organization will meet with FCC commissioners to advocate for keeping the lower rate cap in place to protect incarcerated people and their loved ones.
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